Data Privacy and Dating: What we Sacrifice for Love

-- By EzinneIwuanyanwu - 26 Oct 2024

Dating Apps

Online dating is a broad term that encompasses dating specific platforms like dating apps and websites as well as online platforms that are not specifically geared towards dating but facilitate social interactions that users can take advantage of for their own romantic intentions. This method of dating has quickly become one of the most common ways people find romantic connections in the twenty-first century. Having only accounted for 2% of the ways heterosexual American couples met in 1995 to 39% in 2017, online dating apps like Tinder and social media websites like Facebook have significantly facilitated intimate human connections. Mobile apps on mobile devices are the main vessels for accessing online dating platforms. Even platforms like Match.com and eHarmony, which started as websites, have managed to stay relevant in the dating market by adopting mobile apps. Like most apps, dating apps collect users' personal, behavioral, and location data and then share this information to third parties. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, users give consent for apps to do what intuitively feels like a privacy violation. In this paper, we will dive into how users give dating apps consent to collect and share their data, what current laws are in place to protect data privacy, and whether privacy is a fair trade for the benefits of using these apps.

User Consent to Collecting and Sharing Data

The premise of most dating apps is to give users access to a pool of potential romantic interests. The more information users share about themselves and what they want in a partner, the better the algorithm can customize the pool to fit their interests. Therefore, dating apps need at least some user data to meaningfully function beyond providing a randomized swiping ground of strangers. Although even without customization, they still need user data to accomplish the bare minimum of providing a dating pool, since the pool itself is comprised of the users. Users understand this premise. It is why they voluntarily give up information about their height, gender, hometown, or even their dog's name. What is not clearly understood is the need to share this data with third parties that have no direct involvement with the functions of the app. There is no "need" for these apps to share users' data, but they do it anyways because it is profitable. With about 80% of dating apps either sharing or selling users' data for the purpose of advertising, users may wonder when they gave their consent for them to do so. Most people do not take the time to read through the long paragraphs of a dating app's privacy policy, but those who do can find within the fine print mention of how their data will be shared with third parties. Even then, privacy policies fail to give these rare, studious users the full picture. They may leave out the name of the third parties who will receive the data, and if the third parties are listed, users still have to go

Relevant Data Privacy Laws

Currently, the United States does not have any comprehensive federal laws to regulate how dating apps collect, store, and share user data. However, there are a number of sector-specific and limited federal and state laws that could apply to dating apps. For example, Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, prohibits companies from engaging in "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" such as violating their own privacy policies, false advertising, or failing to have reasonable cybersecurity standards. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 gives users stronger privacy rights, such as the right to delete personal information companies collect from them and the right to opt-out of the selling or sharing of their information. As a big hub for the technology and media sectors, California seems to be leading the charge for data privacy protection. Federal and state governments should look to California for adopting similar laws, with emphasis on the federal government. The internet knows no bounds, which is why we need federal data privacy laws that can protect more than just Californians.

The Bargain for Love

The hopeless romantic is willing to sacrifice anything for love, but for those of us more skeptical about love’s promise, we must consider whether the bargain over our data privacy is worth the swipe. Collecting and internally using personal data for the purpose of fulfilling an app’s primary function seems like a fair trade. Sharing personal data for advertising purposes seems less so. This gross overstep of confidentiality companies are trying to normalize needs to stop, and the only thing they listen to is lost profits. For dating apps lost profits translates to less users. It is on us the users to demand that our data be used responsibly, and until companies comply, we must starve them of our profitable, personal data.

The draft contains some information, culled from press reports and think-tankery. But it does not draw upon any of the social science literature that has developed, does not address questions about whether "love" is being found, by whom at what actual cost, or what is done downstream with the behavior collected. Any of those seem to me to be fruitful avenues for improvement of the next draft.

References

Why aren't these links anchored to the relevant text in the usual way? We are writing for the Web, so why not make it easy for users? The sources, as you will note, don't include any actual scholarship, though I assigned at least one relevant book, Alone Together, and there is quite a substantial relevant literature.

1 https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-heterosexual-us-couples/ 2 https://techscience.org/a/2015103001/ 3 https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/data-hungry-dating-apps-are-worse-than-ever-for-your-privacy/ 4 https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796427696/study-grindr-tindr-and-other-apps-share-sensitive-personal-data-with-advertisers#:~:text=The%20Match%20Group%2C%20the%20company,with%20a%20person's%20personal%20information. 5 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/this-cuffing-season-its-time-to-consider-the-privacy-of-dating-apps/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20there,personal%20information%20held%20by%20businesses. 6 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/this-cuffing-season-its-time-to-consider-the-privacy-of-dating-apps/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20there,personal%20information%20held%20by%20businesses. 7 https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa

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